2017 keynote speakers

Scientific Committee

Thomas Clarke, Key University Research Centre for Corporate Governance, Sydney

Morten Huse, University of Witten/Herdecke, Germany

Coral Ingley, AUT University, Auckland, New Zealand

Lotfi Karoui, Ecole de Management-Normandie, France

Wafa Khlif, Toulouse Business School Barcelona, Spain

Silke Machold, University of Wolverhamptron Business School, UK

Sabina Nielsen, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark

Konan A. Seny Kan, Toulouse Business School, France

Sibel Yamak, European Academy of Management, UK

Call for Papers

Corporations were originally designed as a means of creating wealth and have become a dominant model for collective economic action. Initially centred on an economic function, corporations are now asked to serve social requirements and to engage in the struggle against inequality, discrimination, corruption, poverty, global warming and other global issues. These requests for wider corporate accountability clearly contest the power dynamics between market, national states and civil societies.

The global economic and social turmoil underlines that a clear dynamic of societal and corporate change is taking place. The old global system seems no longer maintainable. Many initial assumptions about the appeal of global development and governance have run aground on the shoals of countervailing realities. The overall trend of political despair and disillusionment, the loss of confidence in the markets as unique arbiter of value creation and distribution and the marketable appeal of governance best practices seem to have come to an end.

Management literature has begun to question these issues and to call for a deeper understanding of the dynamics of political, social and corporate change. Management scholars, but also political science and law scholars urge a rethinking of definitions and frameworks for “corporation”, “capitalism” and “democracy”. Distinctive calls to rethink the purpose, form and value of organisations are converging upon the broad concept of “corporate” governance to better grasp the changing interplay of governments, civil society actors, and corporations.

Corporate governance has become a vital issue in managing corporations of all types in an increasingly uncertain and complex global environment. Such complexity necessitates rethinking, also, concepts such as organisational structure, mechanism, process, and strategy within an emerging new transnational order.

Constructed through the analytical lens of western powers, the well-beaten paths of mainstream corporate governance models, guidelines and reforms without comprehensive, encompassing and innovative theories have not engaged with contemporary and evolutionary debates for equitable and sustainable global development. Accordingly, studies are needed which examine these dynamics from multiple perspectives, and employing critical thinking to build knowledge for generating new creative, alternative approaches to corporate governance.

Three main tenets can be debated in this call for new studies:

The idea of “corporation” and its new mission

Different meanings and interpretations of organisations offered by non-managerial theories could lead to new understandings of the complex “new” socio-economic corporate reality.

Capitalism and the hegemony of the market:

Understanding the hegemony of formal markets reveals the hidden domination of “new” old elites who are deeply involved in the growth of all types of markets. Formal and informal markets are becoming intertwined in a way that only focused analysis can shed light on as to which is truly contributing to societal wellbeing.

Democracy and the changing society as framework

Rethinking the question of markets and corporations in rigorous and creative ways without rethinking and reframing central – even taken-for-granted – analytical and theoretical rubrics of democracy, such as “inclusion”, “participation,” “diversity”, “citizenship”, “imperialism,” and “identity?”

In this call for papers we invite academics to submit cutting edge research dealing with emerging directions to rethink the definitions and frameworks for ‘corporation’, ‘capitalism’ and ‘democracy’” in relation to corporate governance and sustainability. We seek empirical and conceptual papers which address a diverse set of issues that include but are not limited to the following debates:

Are transnational corporations, organisations or similar institutions, in their present form, able to redefine a new capitalism?

What new institutional arrangements are needed to help define the new role of business firm as a political actor in a globalizing society?

If large corporations play a political role in societies, is a new “deliberative” democracy needed in entrepreneurial activities and in corporations?

Are concepts such gender, ethnicity or identity still central to corporate governance efficiency? Are they part of the problem or part of the solution to governance evolution?

How could local governance practices for “big south” growing economies help to enlarge the picture and address corporate governance?

What and how new forms of control may help corporations to navigate through complexity in a word where openness and sharing are becoming the “rules”?

How will the new collaborative “means of production” such as social media, and “collective intelligence” in a sharing economy be governed and by whom?

How do boards and, more generally, governing bodies need to evolve in their roles and composition to meet the new concept of politics which calls a collective regulation?

What happens to governance mechanisms when the new factors of production such as knowledge and intelligence become central to overall “social wellbeing”?